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Secretary
The secretary is a person elected who is two steps below the President, and is perhaps one of the three highly regarded positions.
The job of the secretary is open to any lowerclassmen, specifically aimed towards sophomores or juniors.
Job Requirements
The job requirements of the secretary are to:
- Coordinate with mentors and other executives to set meeting dates
- Record notes during executive meetings
- Communicate information to members/parents to inform of events or meetings or whatever else
- Sending monthly newsletters to sponsors
Coordination with Mentors
The secretary has the job to coordinate with the various robotics mentors to ensure that a meeting day is set and there is no confusion about when it is, where it will be, and what will be going on that day. Most of the time, an email will be sent out to inform other members.
Record Notes during Meetings
Some things, such as information other than meeting dates, need to be recorded for future use and/or for use in an email or newsletter would be sent to members, parents, or sponsors.
An example of this would be if the team organized a special group to manage a presentation to sponsors and a member of the club needs to know which members were on that group, that member can only figure that out if someone wrote it down. Ideally, that person would be the secretary.
Communication
Emails sent out to members, parents, and possibly even sponsors should be concise. Concise meaning "free from all elaboration and superfluous detail".<ref>Webster's defintion of concise</ref>
A team member should be able to read a email, figure out what the email is about, and quickly get the information they need. An example email which a secretary would write can be seen below:
Hi all,
We will be having a meeting in Mrs. Rutland's room (D214) on Thursday (January, 18th) at 2:30 PM. The meeting will end around 4:00 PM. In this meeting we will work on designing the manipulator for this year's FRC game and break into groups to work on the drivetrain.
If you have not seen the game for this year, you can view it here: http://www.usfirst.org
Keep in touch with robotics members, by joining the official Robo Lions forum. There you can communicate with members outside of meetings and discuss ideas freely any time. You can find the forum here: http://www.prhsrobotics.com/forum
Cheers
-John Doe
The example email quickly gets to the point; giving members important information such as location, date, and times quickly in the first sentence, while also giving members extra information for those who are not "in the know." In the following paragraphs, the secretary also add information which could be overall useful to a member - this year's game, and a promotion of this forum.
Emails containing information to members and parents should be sent at reasonable times. If there is a meeting tomorrow, a email should not be sent out after sun down as most people will not check their email then. A opportune time to send a email for a meeting for tomorrow would be in the morning of the day before or a few days in advance. Sending a email late is only excusable in situations of emergency meetings.
Syndication
Created by Sehyun Han, the Syndication serves as a summary and newsletter for the weekly Tuesday meetings. The Secretary is expected to write these every week after the meeting, describing a general synopsis of what was discussed and including important information, details, and reminders. These Syndications exist to notify, inform, and remind both present and absent members of any crucial information from that week's meeting.
Monthly Newsletters to Sponsors
The Vice-President of Communications trains the Secretary on how to format a proper newsletter so that it may be pushed to the sponsors of the team. This allows the sponsors to know what their contributions and support are going towards and to help maintain optimal relations.
Conclusion
The job as a secretary is not limited to what was listed above. Being a secretary is knowing information and being able to share that information with others reliably and in a good manner. If a member needs to know what the team did last week, what a member's phone number is, or who is designing the super-secret rocket engine drivetrain, the member should be able to get it from the secretary.
Previous Secretaries
References
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